1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a facsimile arrangement having an automatic answering telephone/facsimile switching function.
2. Background Art
Some recent facsimile arrangements posses automatic answering telephone sets as well as facsimile sets. The automatic telephone set and facsimile set are selectively connected with a telephone line and the change over is carried out manually or automatically.
FIG. 6 is a timing chart illustrating procedures of reception-change-over according to a conventional facsimile arrangement having an automatic answering telephone/facsimile switching function. As shown in FIG. 6(a), when a call signal from a calling party is received by a called party's side via a telephone line LINE, the facsimile arrangement on the called party's side first sends a predetermined response message to the calling party's side, and then sends a called station identification signal CED, a digital identification signal DIS and a group identification signal GI. Upon receiving these signals, the calling party's side sends a digital command signal DCS. After detecting a calling tone CNG or DCS, the facsimile arrangement on the called party's side is set on standby for reception.
Meanwhile, when CNG or DCS is not sent, i.e., when the calling party's side transmits speech (human voice), the facsimile unit causes the automatic answering telephone set TEL2 to ring a predetermined number of times (four times in the illustrated example), as shown at R in FIG. 6(b). After four times of ringing, the automatic answering telephone set starts recording, as shown in FIG. 6(c). Apparent from FIG. 6, there is a time lag T from the reception of calling until the start of recording since the automatic answering telephone set is set to ring four times before recording, as shown in FIG. 6(c). Therefore, the calling party has to wait for a while.
It goes without saying that the number of ringings of the automatic answering telephone set varies with type of automatic answering telephone set. Nevertheless, the fact that the waiting time corresponding to the number of ringings equally applies to any conventional automatic answering telephone sets as long as the incoming signal is transferred to the automatic answering telephone set via the facsimile unit.